


glory (sounds like a punchline)

by plasticveins



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, M/M, Minor Violence, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, there's also a revolution!! :D
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-01-20 17:58:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18530224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plasticveins/pseuds/plasticveins
Summary: Taeyong knows a thing or two about falling from heaven. He knows a thing or two about sparking a revolution, too.





	glory (sounds like a punchline)

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [kpopolymfics2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/kpopolymfics2019) collection. 



> This fic was written for K-Pop Olymfics 2019 as part of Team Alternate Universe. Olymfics is a challenge in which participants write fics based on prompt sets and compete against other teams of writers, organized by genre.
> 
> **Prompt:**  
>  **NCT – "Go"**  
> [lyrics](https://popgasa.com/2018/03/14/nct-dream-go/) **|** [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD8SYW8rjaQ) **|** [supplementary](https://www.flickr.com/photos/143174185@N05/27232932142/) \- [prompts](https://66.media.tumblr.com/4e1236ac29ce35b9584aa612656e2a8b/tumblr_p7ye24qimv1vajttwo1_1280.jpg)
> 
> also, this fic contains the nine choirs of angels! there is an infographic in case you don't know of them [here](https://www.google.com/amp/s/churchpop.com/2015/10/07/a-beautiful-explanation-of-the-9-choirs-of-angels-in-one-simple-infographic/amp/)!

 

 

_Why does tragedy exist?_

 

 

There is a holy city up in heaven where the angels sing. A whole society washed in God’s holy light, trimmed with gold all over, gleaming like nothing a human could possibly imagine.

In the holy city, there is a society that functions not unlike the rest. There is law and there is order. There is rule and there is regulation. The civilization of angels is almost a mirror image of those on earth, because God created angels in the image of humans.

One would think that the two are different, that something created to serve God could be nothing but holy.

Humans are foolish. This isn’t a matter of opinion, but fact—from their conception somewhere along the earth’s timeline, from the time Eve took a bite into that apple, cherry-red and captivating. To the time of their very first revolution, warcries and bellows deep from their chest, wringing their throats dry.

Humans are all one and the same, but all they do is fight, nothing but hostility and conflict, and it’s a never-ending cycle of anger and strife and grief. Battlefield after battlefield, graveyard after graveyard, it’s an addiction no amount of rehabilitation could fix. It’s an instinct as natural to them as breathing. Tragedy is something humans know better than the backs of their hands.

While humans are foolish, angels are pure. For every human, there is a guardian angel that nudges them along the path. Angels were not created to be as careless as humans. They were not created to spark wars nor foster hostility. They were created to serve, to worship, to guide humans in the right direction. When the trumpets blare, they are taught to sing. When the Principalities beat their wings, they are taught to follow.

But even God makes mistakes. Even God cannot create a being completely free of sin and strife, and so there is tragedy up in heaven where the angels sing, and as it turns out, they’re not so unlike humans after all.

 

 

☼

 

 

There’s an unwritten rule in heaven that angels mustn't show their emotions. Taeyong is reminded of this wherever he goes, when doing whatever he does. Emotion does nothing but hold someone back.

But sometimes, emotions can’t be contained no matter how hard one tries to swallow in down, to not let it seep out. Sometimes, angels still get angry. Angels still cry. Angels still grieve. Today, at the foot of the stairs in front of one of God’s holy shrines, Taeyong curls himself into his wings and he weeps.

“P-Please—” Taeyong begs, and he begs, and this is his thousandth time begging. His throat is sore, and his knees are bruised, and his wings drag along the ground and leave feathers in their wake. It’s a surprise the cherubim haven’t removed him, but maybe it’s because God is listening. Maybe he can plead for a miracle. Maybe Taeyong can be selfish, just this once. “ _Please_ bring him back. I—I love him so much, I’d do anything. God, _please_.”

Taeyong doesn’t know how many hours it’s been, or how many days he’s been grieving. He just wants Johnny back.

_Once an angel falls, they are no longer welcomed into heaven._

Taeyong chokes, heaves, gasps for breath. His lungs hurt, and his heart hurts, and Taeyong just wants to rip it right out of his chest and serve it to God as an offering, as collateral, but—

Taeyong is an angel. Taeyong isn’t a human. God has a different kind of forgiveness he shows towards humans, and Taeyong just isn’t that fortunate.

He doesn’t witness any miracles.

 

 

☼

 

 

When Mark asks Taeyong why Johnny fell, Taeyong tells him it’s because he was foolish.

It was all about unfairness, at first. Taeyong listened to Johnny rant for hours on end about how God shouldn’t excommunicate his own angels, his own children for overstepping. Exiling them for making mistakes. Striking them down as soon as the slightest rule is overstepped. Johnny was frustrated, and rightfully so.

But calling out your omniscient creator out of feelings of frustration is clearly unacceptable, no matter the good intentions. They’re just angels, afterall. The lowest choir in the celestial hierarchy. In the kingdom of heaven, they’re the farthest thing from God’s light and the closest thing to humanity. Little pawns on a chessboard.

“If humans deserve second chances, third chances, infinite chances—then so do angels,” Taeyong recites it like a prayer, a benediction imprinted into his memory. Words retrace so easily it Taeyong’s mind when it comes to Johnny. “That was what Johnny said.”

“I don’t think that’s an unreasonable thought to have,” Mark says. His eyes are so wide and naive that it reminds Taeyong of his old self, hundreds of years ago when he was born from the light and the aether.

“I don’t think it is either,” Taeyong agrees. He leans his head on Mark’s shoulder, wings dropping onto the ground because he just doesn’t have the energy fold them back up anymore. “But Johnny did more than just think it.”

Mark shifts, a thumb drawing soothing circles into the back of Taeyong’s hand. It’s temporary comfort, and Taeyong isn’t sniffing anymore like he was ten minutes ago, so he appreciates the sentiment. Mark asks, but Taeyong is sure he already knows the answer, “What did he do?”

Taeyong whispers, voice so impossibly quiet as if he was afraid of someone listening, “He broke one of the most important rules of all.”

_Do not challenge God._

Taeyong says, throat sore and worn, eyes stinging from crying all the tears he had left to cry, “And so he fell.”

 

 

 

_Because you are full of rage._

 

 

Humans are created to love. They are taught to pour their devotion into someone else, into everyone around them, into the world they live in. In that respect, angels aren’t any different.

Heaven is filled to the brim with love. There is love in the hymns the angels sing and in the benedictions they recite. When they pray, it’s out of worship. When they act, it’s out benevolence. Out of nothing but pure, unadulterated adoration for God.

_But does God love his own creation?_

Taeyong is starting to have his doubts.

 

 

☼

 

 

Calling it Armageddon is somewhat of a misnomer. There is no grand crusade between heaven and hell, everything good and everything evil. There is no final battle before the Day of Judgement. There’s no way to strike down God, and the demons from six feet under haven’t yet emerged from the cavernous below.

Instead, there is a ripple in time and space. There is crumble. There is implosion from the inside out, and it begins with one of heaven’s very own.

So they call it a revolution. A rebellion. Something reckless, and so, _so_ terribly human.

“Taeyong,” Jaehyun’s voice is stern. It rings with the kind of authority Taeyong thinks he would hear coming from an archangel. “Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what?” is what Taeyong asks, and he’s playing coy.

“Don’t do _this_ ,” Jaehyun says with a hand gesture. Taeyong doesn’t think he really has the right to be exasperated. “Whatever grand scheme you’re planning, because it’s stupid. It’s unbelievable that Yuta and the others are joining too.”

“Well _this_ is important to me,” Taeyong emphasizes, and there’s absolutely no changing his mind. Not when Johnny is somewhere wandering on earth, not when their wings are getting clipped for wanting justice in a place that should already be just. “I’m getting Johnny back. I’m seeing him again, no matter what.”

Jaehyun grimaces. “There’s no way to kill God.”

“That much is obvious,” Taeyong says with an eye roll. He turns to look Jaehyun in the eye with the adamance that could rival a Power. It’s a feeling that isn’t familiar to him in the least, but he could get used to it. “I’m here to make a point.”

“So you’re just challenging God?” Taeyong shrugs and nods. Jaehyun quirks a quizzical eyebrow. An angel like Jaehyun has no business acting like an archangel, but Taeyong knows he means well anyway. “You’ve spent way too much time on earth with humans.”

“No,” Taeyong says. He smiles for the first time in weeks. “I’ve just spent too much time with Johnny.”

 

 

☼

 

 

Taeyong spends so much time whittling arrows his fingers bleed. There are dark circles under his eyes (strange, considering angels don’t eat or sleep) and the bitter taste of spite on his tongue. He wonders if his hands would still get chappened if he were a Dominion.

Mark and Yukhei are hunched over with their wings folded neatly on their backs, tying each arrow off with a feather and gold thread. Taeyong can see the way their shoulders are dropped, exhaustion heavy in their demeanor.

But neither of them complain. Maybe it’s because they’re angels. Maybe it’s because they want this just as much as Taeyong does. Maybe it’s because they understand.

It’s warfare up in heaven. If they don’t die, they fall.

But it’ll be worth it.

 

 

 

_Why are you full of rage?_

 

 

It doesn’t take much to bewitch a human, but it takes much, much more to bewitch an angel. Somehow, Taeyong manages to recruit more than he expected into joining a rebellion.

The first of them to fall has wings darker than the midnight sky. Taeyong feels apologetic for not knowing his name, but there’s bound to be casualties. They’re not immortal, after all.

But the guilt hits so much harder when it’s an angel he personally knows. It’s Yuta this time, and Taeyong’s eyes go wide at the sight of a Dominion ripping the wings right out of his back as if he were a frail little butterfly, snapping the bone and tearing out the feathers, leaving nothing but a huge gash. The last Taeyong sees of Yuta is flesh, streaks of harsh red down his back, and only then does Taeyong realize how gruesome wars can actually be.

Yuta falls, tips over like a corpse and dives into the world below, the energy completely drained from his body. The next thing Taeyong feels is anger, rage at full force, ripping through him like a scream in the back of his throat.

Taeyong draws a bow and sends it flying, and then shoots another, and then another. An archangel, a Principality, a Power. They come fluttering down like birds with broken wings, and a swarm of angels glide through the aether with their swords gripped tightly in their hands when they beat their wings and ascend again.

Mark and Yukhei are right beside him, bow in hand like they're an extended part of their bodies, one eye shut for accuracy. Mark’s aim is just as good as Taeyong’s, and they shoot arrow after arrow at targets that flit across the sky in front of their eyes. Arrow after arrow at the Seraphim and the Thrones, burning before they even get too close.

Jaehyun’s somewhere above them with a spear. His wings shake as he struggles to stay afloat, to dodge the Powers charging towards him. He’s so visibly exhausted, Taeyong’s surprised he’s still up in the aether altogether.

Victory is so out of reach.

 

 

☼

 

 

Johnny always told Taeyong that for every star in the night sky, there is an angel. Every supernova is a new set of wings sprouting from someone’s back. Every constellation is a small choir with gospel on their tongue. Sirius is an archangel that guides the lost souls home.

As they’re struck down, one by one like target practice, Taeyong wonders if another star is burning out. He wonders just how many galaxies were smothered, how many constellations fizzled out, how many planets lost the celestial bodies they orbit.

Taeyong couldn’t even begin to count the fallen. The Cherubim are still unscathed and plentiful, each of their four wings just as full as they were before. God’s infantry was clearly not an easy cliff to scale, but he never thought the holy realm could look as ugly as this.

Taeyong just wants to see Johnny again.

 

 

 

_Because you are full of grief._

 

 

There is blood on the battlefield of angels. There is gore on the warzone of God. There is grief and there is strife, because the humans had to get this trait from _someone_ , right?

Sometimes mankind depicts angels as voids, black holes in a human guise. But that’s not the case at all, because angels inhale aether and exhale sentience, are made of bone and tissue and a tangible kind of divinity. They think and they talk, they touch and they feel—and they, very much so, bleed.

There are black feathers and gaping wounds all over, everywhere Taeyong glances around him. But there are more that beat their wings than those who are struck down. A million to their one. A million arrows against the sword of a Power, steadfast and unrelenting in the sky.

But it’s all in vain.

With a wingbeat of a Virtue, space and gravity itself bends, and their million to one is simply outmatched.

An army of meager, low-class angels can’t land a scratch on the Cherubim or the Seraphim. A whirlwind of arrows and swords can’t even scathe a Throne. God’s infantry is the best in the cosmos, after all, and a reckless organization of frail, feeble angels are nothing but hummingbirds to a hawk.

Wars between humans are fought to colonize, to trample, to defeat to a pulp. Wars between angels are fought for liberation.

When in a revolution up in heaven where the angels sing, if you don’t die, you fall. But it isn’t exactly the worst end result in the world.

Taeyong laughs. Even as he’s plummeting from the sky like comets do, breaking the atmosphere and burning as if he’s a shooting star, there’s a strange sense of peace he feels. A feeling of accomplishment. Tranquility somewhere in the noise.

It doesn’t feel all too bad to fight for something.

(When a thousand angels fall from heaven, humans call it a meteor shower.)

 

 

☼

 

 

Taeyong’s fall from grace isn’t as nearly as painful and difficult as he thought it would be. It’s quiet, without a sound, nothing like Lucifer’s falls in the holy books. But Taeyong supposes he isn’t exactly an angel of the highest order, and it’s better that he falls like a spark rather than a bolt of lightning.

Once he crashes, it takes him no time to find the others. Call it fate, but Mark, Jaehyun, and Yukhei all landed somewhere in the same forest with only a few scrapes and bruises and wings dark as charcoal. Yuta is with them too, wounded but breathing, and Taeyong feels some tension lift from his shoulders.

“Oh, thank the high heavens you’re okay—” Taeyong sighs into Yuta’s shoulder when he pulls him close. “I thought you died right in front of my eyes.”

Yuta laughs. He looks so jarringly human, but maybe it’s because he doesn’t have wings anymore. But Yuta looks cheerful right now, and Taeyong is more than relieved over the fact. “As if I’ll ever die.”

Every joint in Taeyong’s body hurts but he’s still fully capable of rolling his eyes. “As if I would ever be freed from any of you.”

Yukhei says with an arm slung around Mark’s shoulders, “You’re right. You’re stuck with us for the rest of eternity.”

“With or without heaven?”

“With or without heaven.”

Taeyong doesn’t really mind.

 

 

☼

 

 

The universe works in strange ways. There are things that can be attributed to the work of God, God’s grace bestowed on them out of benevolence. But there are things that are simply cosmic chance, strokes of luck that occur only once in a lifetime, the kind of luck that’s been accumulated from wishing on million shooting stars.

Call it fate, blame it on the alignment of the planets, but there’s a figure in the distance once they exit the forest, one Taeyong knows better than the back of his hand.

Sometimes, it’s simply up to cosmic chance.

Taeyong starts sprinting at a speed far faster than a human ever could.

This is that chance.

 

 

☼

 

 

The space between the kingdom in the sky and the abyss six feet under isn’t as great as Taeyong thought it was. Taeyong figured it they’d be on opposite sides of their universe, but heaven is only beyond the thin veil of the atmosphere, a portal to another dimension. Where heaven and hell touch, there’s purgatory, the murky grey area of sin and redemption.

But Taeyong is in the realm where everything begins, on earth with his heart feeling fuller than it ever has before.

Kissing on earth isn’t that unlike kissing in heaven.

“Was it lonely without me?” Johnny asks with a smirk, pressing kisses down the line of his back, breath hot against where Taeyong’s wings sprout from his back.

“Yeah,” Taeyong murmurs, shivering as Johnny’s hands run down his sides, large palms making him feel so small, so delicate. “I had the others of course, but—”

“But?”

Taeyong lets out a satisfied sigh. “They weren’t _you_.”

(Sex on earth is completely unlike anything in heaven, however.)

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” Johnny says into his neck, down his spine, tracing Taeyong’s vertebrae with his tongue like he’s mapping the stars out on his back.

Taeyong laughs, so full of fondness he feels like he could burst. “You were always a terrible angel.”

Johnny laughs too, and there’s no hymn or benediction that Taeyong is more familiar with. “No, I’m just a fool.”

When fallen angels have sex, their little black feathers litter the ground around them like fallen leaves. Johnny handles Taeyong so gently it’s almost saintly, pressing kisses all over his back, along his ribs, between his shoulder blades as if he were dissecting him, taking in all of him like he’s been starved his whole life.

Taeyong wonders what he would see if he split Johnny’s chest down the middle. If he were to splices him open by the sternum, maybe he would see the cosmos. If he cracks Johnny’s skull open, tears through flesh and bone and dura mater, maybe he would see supernovas—stars exploding into carbon and lightwaves, cosmic destruction in slow motion.

And maybe he would see the universe because they are angels, little galaxies spun and woven into tangible bodies. Even if they have wings darker than ink, dark enough to blot out the stars in the sky, this is their own personal heaven.

_Have you ever loved someone so intensely, you start a revolution?_

They don’t need anything else.

  

**Author's Note:**

> a billion and one thank you's to the mods for being ENDLESSLY patient and understanding with me. especially to mod k, the absolute sweetest and most patient human being in the world whom i would die for;; thank u to s for being my cheerleader who beta-ed for me last minute who listened to me ramble about BOTH of my plots. whew. i appreciate all of you SO so much!!
> 
> the title of this fic was taken from [this](https://notbecauseofvictories.tumblr.com/post/53242182128/chrysopoetics-i-the-world-ends-softly) poem, and the quote i used as a motif was a quote from anne carson's tragedy: a curious art form.
> 
> feel free to come and cry with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/switchjaehyun)!!


End file.
